Lebanon welcomes the Russian initiative on Syria that was adopted by Arab states during Saturday’s meeting in Cairo, Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour said on Sunday, while reiterating insistence on “Lebanon’s stances concerning the previous resolutions” passed by the Arab League.

“Lebanon welcomed the Russian initiative and the points agreed on with the Russian side, reiterating its stances on the previous resolutions,” Mansour said in Beirut, after taking part in the Cairo talks between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Arab counterparts.

Arab and Russian foreign ministers meeting in Cairo on Saturday called for an end to the violence in Syria "whatever its source," as they struggled try to find common ground on ways to resolve the deadly conflict.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters after a meeting at the Arab League headquarters that he and his Arab counterparts want "an end to the violence whatever its source."

Russia on Saturday said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made clear to the U.N.-Arab League envoy for Syria Kofi Annan that Moscow is opposed to "crude interference" from the outside into Syrian internal affairs.

"A particular emphasis was placed on the inadmissibility of trampling on international legal norms, including through crude interference in Syria's internal affairs," the foreign ministry said after a meeting earlier between Lavrov and Annan in Cairo.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour telephoned on Friday his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Muallem to discuss the developments in Syria, reported the National News Agency.

Mansour said that Muallem had informed him of the “positive conditions that are returning the situation in Syria back to normal.”

Egyptian police arrested a man on Wednesday who they thought had been a top lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, only to discover that the man they had nabbed had the right name but the wrong identity.

An Egyptian known as Seif al-Adel is on the FBI's Most Wanted List, indicted for involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya and with a $5 million price tag on his head.

The Egypt trial of dozens of democracy activists including Americans on charges of receiving illegal funding began in a packed courtroom on Sunday, despite Washington's insistence that the charges be dropped.

A prosecutor in the court in a Cairo suburb read out the charges against the defendants, saying their acceptance of illicit foreign funds had "detracted from the sovereignty of the Egyptian state."

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his rival Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal on Thursday postponed talks on forming a unified government, a Fatah official said, in a further delay to ending an almost five-year rift.

The official with the Abbas-led party said the talks were postponed "because Hamas continues to prevent the election committee from registering voters in Gaza," the Islamist-ruled Palestinian territory.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrived in Cairo on Wednesday for talks with Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal on the formation of a national unity government, the official MENA agency reported.

The long-time rivals have been struggling to implement the terms of a reconciliation deal signed in Cairo in May, which calls for the formation of an interim government of independents to pave the way for presidential and legislative elections within a year.

The landmark murder and corruption trial of ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak enters its last day of hearings on Wednesday, with the judge expected to announce the date of the verdict.

The trial could see the toppled dictator, his interior minister Habib al-Adly and six security chiefs sent to the gallows if convicted of complicity in the deaths of peaceful protesters during the uprising that overthrew him a year ago.

Egypt is to provide 22 megawatts of electricity to the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, where the sole power plant has shut down after running out of fuel, the electricity minister said on Tuesday.

Egypt "will begin boosting the Gaza Strip with around 22 megawatts of electricity at the start of next week, to confront the crisis there and ease the suffering of the Palestinian people," Hassan Yunes said.